Nefertiti

In Our Time: History

BBC

History

4.4 • 3.2K Ratings

🗓️ 15 February 2024

⏱️ 50 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the woman who inspired one of the best known artefacts from ancient Egypt. The Bust of Nefertiti is multicoloured and symmetrical, about 49cm/18" high and, despite the missing left eye, still holds the gaze of onlookers below its tall, blue, flat topped headdress. Its discovery in 1912 in Amarna was kept quiet at first but its display in Berlin in the 1920s caused a sensation, with replicas sent out across the world. Ever since, as with Tutankhamun perhaps, the concrete facts about Nefertiti herself have barely kept up with the theories, the legends and the speculation, reinvigorated with each new discovery.

With

Aidan Dodson Honorary Professor of Egyptology at the University of Bristol

Joyce Tyldesley Professor of Egyptology at the University of Manchester

And

Kate Spence Senior Lecturer in Egyptian Archaeology at the University of Cambridge and Fellow of Emmanuel College

Producer: Simon Tillotson

Reading list:

Dorothea Arnold (ed.), The Royal Women of Amarna: Images of Beauty from Ancient Egypt (The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1996) Norman de Garis Davies, The Rock Tombs of el-Amarna (6 vols. Egypt Exploration Society, 1903-1908) Aidan Dodson, Amarna Sunset: Nefertiti, Tutankhamun, Ay, Horemheb and the Egyptian Counter-reformation. (American University in Cairo Press, 2009 Aidan Dodson, Nefertiti, Queen and Pharaoh of Egypt: her life and afterlife (American University in Cairo Press, 2020)

Aidan Dodson, Tutankhamun: King of Egypt: his life and afterlife (American University in Cairo Press, 2022)

Barry Kemp, The City of Akhenaten and Nefertiti: Amarna and Its People (Thames and Hudson, 2012)

Dominic Montserrat, Akhenaten: History, Fantasy and Ancient Egypt (Routledge, 2002)

Friederike Seyfried (ed.), In the Light of Amarna: 100 Years of the Nefertiti Discovery (Ägyptisches Museum und Papyrussamlung Staatlich Museen zu Berlin/ Michael Imhof Verlag, 2013)

Joyce Tyldesley, Tutankhamun: Pharaoh, Icon, Enigma (Headline, 2022)

Joyce Tyldesley, Nefertiti’s Face: The Creation of an Icon (Profile Books, 2018)

Joyce Tyldesley, Nefertiti: Egypt’s Sun Queen (Viking, 1998)

Transcript

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0:00.0	BBC Sounds, music radio podcasts.
0:05.0	This is in our time from BBC Radio 4,
0:07.6	and this is one of more than a thousand episodes
0:10.2	you can find on BBC Sounds and on our website.
0:13.0	If you scroll down the page for this edition,
0:15.0	you can find a reading list to go with it.
0:17.0	I hope you enjoy the program.
0:19.0	Hello, the Bustam Nefertiti is one of the best known artifacts from ancient Egypt, multicolored and symmetrical, and despite the missing left eye, still holding the gaze of posterity below her tall blue headdress.
0:32.0	Its discovery in 1912 in a manner was kept quiet at first, but its display
0:37.1	in Berlin in the 1920s caused a sensation with replicas sent out all across the world.
0:43.0	And ever since, as with Tooten Carmen,
0:45.0	the concrete facts about Nefatiti herself
0:47.0	have barely kept up with the theories, the legends,
0:50.0	the speculation,
0:51.0	reinvigorated with each new discovery.
0:53.7	With me to discuss Nefertiti R. Aidan Dodson,
0:56.8	Honorary Professor of Egyptology at the University of Bristol,
1:00.0	Joyce Tilsley, Professor of Egyptology at the University of Manchester,
1:04.0	and Kate Spence, senior lecturer in Egyptian archaeology at the University of Cambridge and fellow of
1:09.4	Emmanuel College.
1:10.9	Kate Spence, and we mentioned Amana, where was it and what was it?
1:14.4	Amana was a settlement built in just after 1350 BC by the Pharaoh Arkenaten
	...

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